JAMES
BIRNEY DRAPER — That a good name is
to be chosen rather than riches is in a peculiar sense exemplified by
the career of Ontario's well known citizen James Birney Draper, who has
lived in this community for over a quarter of a century, and thus
personally and through his business has earned a host of friendships and
has enjoyed every degree of success.

Mr. Draper was born May 16,
1855, in County Gray, Ontario, Canada, son of Charles and Eleanor
(Birney) Draper. His father was a farmer who moved to the village of
Drayton in County Wallington, and died before his son James was twelve
years of age. The latter had only a common school education at Drayton,
and at the age of eleven went to work for a farmer, his wages being
three dollars a month for a period of nine months. Out of this meager
income he saved twenty-five dollars, which he invested in sheep,
subsequently destroyed by dogs. He continued working as a farm laborer
until he was about twenty years of age, and then learned the tailoring
trade in the village of Chesley, Ontario. Subsequently he was in
business for himself in the country village of Pinkerton, where he met
his future wife, Miss Louisa Mutrie.

From Pinkerton he returned to
Drayton and for eight years had charge of the tailoring department of
John Whyte's department store, and in the spring of 1889 went west to
Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, to open a men's tailoring and men's
furnishing goods and fur store. He remained in that western province
five years, and in the spring of 1894 arrived in Ontario, California,
and on the 13th of May of that year engaged in business as a merchant
tailor.

In the fall of 1898 Mr. Draper
bought the undertaking business of Fred Clark, succeeding Isaac Garbuth,
who had charge, but was incapacitated through illness, and Mr. Draper
had voluntarily assisted at a number of funerals and his qualifications
for the special service demanded of a funeral undertaker were so evident
that though he had no funds to buy the business several Ontario townsmen
gave him the money needed without requiring security. He has since
developed a model funeral service, and in the spring of 1911 he erected
a building of his own, containing an appropriately equipped chapel, at a
cost of twenty-seven thousand dollars. The building is ideally located
for his business, away from the main thoroughfare but accessible to all
points of the town. During the first year Mr. Draper directed thirty
funerals, and his business patronage is such that he now handles on an
average three hundred such occasions annually. Recently, at the urgent
request of ministers of all denominations, bankers and business men, he
bought the funeral establishment at Upland from L, C. Vedder, and his
son, Fred E., now has charge of the Upland business, and Mr. Draper's
youngest daughter, Ella, has charge of the books. Mr. Draper has in
every sense been a self-made man, and the integrity of his life has
justified the confidence so frequently reposed in him.

He was president of the
Southern California Funeral Directors Association, also vice president
of the State Funeral Directors Association, and was a member of the
legislative committee that was instrumental in placing the present
embalmers' bill on the statute books. He is also a member by invitation
of the National Selected Morticians, with headquarters at Pittsburgh,
Pa. He has for years been bitterly opposed to the liquor traffic, is a
republican in politics, and a member of the Official Board of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. He was the first treasurer of the Volunteer
Fire Department of Ontario.

Mr. Draper married Miss Louisa
Mutrie at Pinkerton, Ontario, Canada, in 1884. They bad a family of five
children, three sons and two daughters, named Harold Mutrie, Olive
Louisa, Ella Martin, Fred Earl and Ewart Blake. Harold M. was killed in
an automobile accident on October 16, 1916. Mrs. Draper was born in the
Township of Nichol, County of Wellington, Province of Ontario, Canada,
January 28, 1858, and was educated in public schools there.

Source:
History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties
By: John Brown, Jr., Editor for San Bernardino County
And James Boyd, Editor for Riverside County
With selected biography of actors and witnesses of the period
of growth and achievement.
Volume III, the Western Historical Association, 1922,
The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL